Closing Australia’s biggest coal-fired power plant would be an “Electric Shock”, the headline screamed, that would do almost nothing for the climate and cost thousands of jobs.
So said a page one story for Sydney’s Daily Telegraph last week on the supposed impact of a decision by Origin Energy to close its Eraring power station in 2025, seven years earlier than planned.
There were “10,000 workers in the firing line”, the story claimed, quoting a researcher at the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), Daniel Wild.
The IPA’s own research, Wild said, showed that the 10,000 jobs in the Hunter electorate would be “destroyed” by a target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
So how did the IPA – a thinktank which does not reveal its funders but is known to have accepted at least $4.5m from mining magnate Gina Rinehart – come to those jobs numbers?
The estimate comes from an IPA report released last year. Even a perfunctory glance would have most questioning the credibility of a report from a thinktank that has promoted climate science denial since the early 1990s.
The IPA looked at all the jobs in all industries classified by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in its Labour Force Survey, then looked at emissions from different industry sectors, and then tried to divide those two numbers to give “emissions per job”.
Any job in an industry that was above the “economy-wide average of 0.22 kt CO2” was arbitrarily deemed “at risk”. That’s an uncredible 653,600 jobs.
So according to the IPA, every single job in the electricity supply industry – all 64,100 of them – are “at risk” from a target to reach net zero by 2050.
Electricity supply includes everyone working in power generation, transmission, distribution and then selling power and operating the electricity market.
Only one of those – generation – is affected by closing down a coal plant. If we follow this logic then net zero is also bad news for everyone working in the renewable energy industry. Who knew?
The IPA report also thinks all 306,200 jobs in agriculture to be “at risk” from a target to reach net zero by 2050 – a target endorsed by the National Farmers’ Federation.
If we again continue this IPA logic, net zero kills off Australia’s food supply and all our electricity – even renewables.
The workforce development director at the renewable industry’s Clean Energy Council, Dr Anita Talberg, said growth in renewables would displace about 10,000 jobs in fossil fuel generation. There was also substantial skills overlap between the coal sector and renewables.
Prof Richard Eckard, an expert in sustainable agriculture at the University of Melbourne, told Temperature Check: “There are options emerging for farmers to reduce emissions profitably, plus significant options for them to generate diversified income through carbon markets.
“In contrast, physical climate change, and not addressing greenhouse gas emissions, will have a devastating impact on agriculture in Australia in particular.
“A 1.5C rise in temperature will mean that current agricultural systems will no longer exist in the regions they do now.”
Compare and contrast
The Daily Telegraph’s scare story also attempted to undermine the climate benefits of closing Eraring by saying it would “cut global emissions by less than 0.04 of 1%”.
It is a nifty but deceptive trick to compare Eraring’s emissions with the entire world’s greenhouse gas footprint to make the closure seem almost pointless.
But given the coal plant and its annual emissions exist in New South Wales, why not compare it with that state’s emissions?
If you did, then Eraring’s 13Mt of CO2 represents 9% of the state’s annual footprint, or 2.6% of Australia’s. Suddenly, the emissions don’t seem quite so minuscule.
But the suggestion that because something is small it can somehow be ignored, is spurious.
Governments around the world agree to report their emissions to the UN each year and they don’t get to ignore the odd massive power station here and there.
Try testing that argument out on the tax office. Tell them you don’t think it’s worth their while collecting tax from you because what you owe them is only a tiny percentage of their revenue.
Dam flooding
Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman, now a Senate candidate for minor party the Liberal Democrats, doesn’t want any “climate change fear-mongering” over the devastating flooding in Brisbane.
On Twitter, Newman – who doubts the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions – listed major floods in the city, saying the 1893 flood “was bigger than 2011 and 1974”.
The problem with any blanket statement on the size of floods in Brisbane is that major dams at Somerset and Wivenhoe have both been built since the 1893 floods, as well as all the infrastructure, roads and buildings of a modern city.
Dr Margaret Cook, a University of Queensland historian who wrote a 2019 book about the history of Brisbane’s floods, told Temperature Check: “The dams have totally changed the hydrology of the river. What’s different about this flood is that in 1974 and 1893 we had a cyclone. The rainfall this time was mind-blowing.”
The flooding in Brisbane was caused by a combination of a deluge over the city itself, swelling creeks causing flash flooding and huge rainfall totals in catchments above and below Wivenhoe Dam – the city’s main flood defence.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology, there were 33 places in south-east Queensland that received more than a metre of rain in the six days from 23 to 28 February. In Brisbane, 792.8mm fell in those six days – beating the previous six-day record of 655.8mm set in January 1974.
Climate scientists have warned that as global temperatures go up, the risk of floods also goes up.
Still denying
And finally, a reminder that the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, is still a climate science denier.
“Climate change is happening but it’s happening naturally and there’s no true science to say it’s humans changing it,” Hanson told Sky News’ Paul Murray on Monday in a statement that went unchallenged.
